This smells like disaster. Did we learn nothing from the Brits and the Soviets' foolishness there?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/182650

As more troops are sent into Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, a key ally in the war on terror has given local autonomy to supporters of the Taliban. Secretary Clinton better be on her way to Pakistan!

What a truly shocking move deserving of a new thread. He only talked about his plans for Afghanistan, what, every day for more than a year during the campaign?

Yes, Hillary to save the day.

Where are all the anti-war protestors on this one?

Yeah, that's why some (one?) of us voted for Cynthia McKinney. Liberal Dems will fancy-ass their way into loving this "good war."

Sorry, I guess new threads should be saved for "Michelle Obama, style icon" and such.

It is too early to see whether Obama can convert his self-proclaimed "progressive" Christian values into policy, which will guide a strategy consistent with those values, and result in similarly consistent tactics; something that has arguably not been done by past invaders of Afghanistan. We shall see.

One might draw a slight analogy to the Bosnian War where the US inserted itself with clandestine activities at first but then lead a very public and UN-sanctioned coalition to neutralize the primary aggresor, then Yugoslavia.

Remember that the arch-villain behind events that lead to that war, Slobodan Milošević died in prison during a trial by an international tribunal.

There may be a much more difficult path to such a conclusion in Afghanistan, given that the so-called war on terror has been framed as a largely religious battle by militants in both the east and the west, and that the primary instigator for the hostilities is an international terrorist rather than the president of a country. However these do not preclude the possibility of Obama having more success than we have in the past 8-years conflict.

I too am skeptical about our chances in Afghanistan. I just would have expected you to draw the line somewhere at making new threads to trash Obama, especially on a topic as well-worn as this one. The lack of responses to your weekly whines should tell you something. Maybe make an "Obama Isn't Left-Wing Enough" thread to throw all of them in one place.

EXACTLY!!

I didn't realize that a policy couldn't be debated if we knew about it in advance! Very "Democratic."

Many of the Obamaniacs were creaming themselves 3 weeks ago about executive orders that had been promised in advance -- like the (future) closing of Guantanamo, while many of the Bush detainee policies (as opposed to prison LOCATIONS) appear to be unchanged.




That most Dems *refuse* to criticize the prez, or to defend his most Bush-like moves?

Well, I strongly support President Obama, worked for his election, voted for him, and think he's doing a great job overall, but I do also strongly disagree with some of his actions or non-actions, like:

=kissing the GOP's ass only to get kicked right back in his when they all refused to support the stimulus bill (even though according to Arlen Specter more than a few secretly *did* support it--why aren't the dizzy media reporting this?)
=his failure to support Congressional Democrats' plans to investigate the W administration for its multiple crimes
=his support of the Bush administration's "state secrets" argument in that CIA detainees' lawsuit
=his support of the Bush administration's indefinite detention of terrorist subjects arrested far away from a battlefield
=his failure to conclusively end the worse aspects of the extraordinary rendition system
=his bullying of the UK to force its silence on critical evidence in a terrorist lawsuit
=his failure to speak out forcefully against the notion of Social Security and Medicare as "entitlements" and to allow the GOP and conservative Democrats to demagogue on this
=his slow move to support nationalization of the major banks to address the banking crisis, even though all of the leading, non-administration, highly regarded economists (Krugman, Roubini, Stiglitz, etc.) have been urging this
=his appointment of so FEW WOMEN, and comparatively few Latinos to top posts in his administration

I don't know how this Afghanistan move is going to turn out. I don't support it, and I want him to rein in Petreus and the others in the military (Keane, etc.) who are Bushites. But I'm willing to give him qualified support on this, at least for a short period of time. It doesn't look good to me, but one thing that has assured me for the most part about President Obama is that he is willing to admit he's wrong, and change course quickly if what he's doing isn't working.

I guess that means I'm not an Obamaniac, or maybe I am. All I know is, Cynthia McKinney, whom I have supported, would have been a disaster as a president, but I'm glad she was there so people who wanted someone to the left of Obama had someone to vote for. Either she or Obama is a striking improvement of W-saster in Chief and his various wannabe successors, McCain, Palin, Romney, Giuliani, etc. Not a single one of them still appears to grasp BASIC ECONOMICS. Just imagine how much worse we'd be right now had any of them ended up in office.

As it is quite obvious to all, the reasons for going to war in Iraq, i.e. weapons of mass destruction and Hussein's tenuous links to al Qaeda, proved to be wrong, and the bungling of the then-Pentagon leadership and an inept Administration that thought that it could prosecute a war without thinking about the aftermath of occupation and nation-building showed gross negligence and ineptitude on the part of the Bush Administration. The leaders of both parties n Congress and the overwhelming majority of members of Congress supported that decision. And the media failed to question the evidence presented for that war.

Obama, while an elected state legislator, did not support that decision.

The war in Iraq, despite what the Bush administration said, diverted our attention from focusing on the original intent of going into Afghanistan, to topple the Taliban government that actively supported those responsible for the destruction of the Twin Towers, the attempted destruction of the Pentagon, and the downing of United Fight 93, i.e. al Qaeda, and to bring those responsible for those attacks to justice. Obama was never against that.

As events unfolded in Iraq it became a theatre of the war on terrorism. The Surge has worked in Iraq, thus allowing Obama to redirect attention to Afghanistan, where the Taliban is resurrgent and the Karsi government, long given carte blanche by Bush & Co., has proven to be corrupt. Moreover, Pakistan, a key ally in the war on terrorism, a nation into which the US has poured in untold billions in aid for that effort, now allows Taliban supporter local autonomy. The Pakistani government turns a blind eye to al Qaeda in its midst, and at times gives passive assistance to these same terrorists. Pakistan is about to implode!

And Osama bin Laden is still at large!

Let me lay my cards out. I knew several good people who died on 9/11. I want to see those responsible for their violent deaths brought to justice. As a gay man, I want to be able to go into the middle of the town square and be able to kiss whomever I was with smack on the lips. There may be parts of this country where I would receive disapproval and perhaps scorn. I am denied the right to marry another man. But the Taliban would kill me. They crushed gay men under piles of rock. Bravo, Mr. Obama, for getting us back on track! Clinton, as secretary of state, needs to focus on this. Leave the economic issues to Geitner!

Hopefully Iraq will remain on the current low boil, with the occasional assassination of a political figure around election time, but history in the region does not support that. Democratic elections in both Lebanon and Gaza gave us results neither we nor our primary middle east ally Israel, either expected or were pleased with. Moderating Iran might stabilize Iraq, and the middle east, eventually. The best that can be said about Iraq is that our former president is no longer determining policy there. He seemed more capable of forcing defeat from the jaws of victory than Barney Fife on Mayberry.

Geithner has been very adamant about preserving the current market system in which he seems to have as much faith as Obama does in his religion. Both may stumble on their ideologies if the economy does not respond to their efforts as they expect. Obama says he is willing to try something new if the current economic remedies (TARP, TARP II? and the recent stimulus bill) do not "work". But how do they define "work"? Is it just enough to gain greater majorities in Congress in the midterm elections? Hopefully they will eventually realize that they need to make savings, wherever they are, into investments; and halt the ability of capital to race around the world to seek the cheapest labor and resources to exploit, without an international regulatory body to, first, impose transparency and, second, insure that wealth works rather than being hoarded by those who do not need to spend it to stimulate growth.

I am very skeptical that the Surge in Iraq "worked." Paying cash money to insurgents not to blow sh*t up -- which the commanders didn't even tell Bush about til they started doing it -- that (temporarily) seems to have worked.

Most of the people responsible for 9/11 are dead or in detention. The Swat Valley in Pakistan looks like it may be a more vital anti-US terror base in the future than Afghanistan.

Of course, I believe the US has been a major terror-funding state in the world for generations; many of you probably disagree.

Here are a few links to articles and editorials on the effectiveness of the surge in Iraq on which to base an opinion:

The Economist

The Washington Post

Council on Foreign Relations

A Canadian Perspective

The View from Seattle

I've tried to present a diversity of opinion.

Many responsible for 9/11 have yet to be brought to justice. And, yes, the Swat valley is a center of anti-US terrorism, which deeply impacts Afghanistan!

And while acknowledge the role past US administrations have played in funding regimes with gross human rights abuses and so-called "freedom fighters," we are able to exercise our right to protest the actions of those administrations and replace those administrations through peaceful means, something the Taliban and others like them deny to their own people.

I read off of Reuters he was planning on moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.

That's quite a laundry list of disappointments, fantomas -- I admire your honesty. I wonder why most of the other Dems STILL seem obsessed with the now-irrelevant Sarah Palin, instead of examining chinks in their hero-president's armor?

Uh, because maybe they realize like me that he's human; that he hasn't been in office an entire month; that he is still doing a great job; and they want him to succeed.

Maybe they're also just taking a break after having been ignored for most of the last eight years despite all the signs that the disaster-in-chief who was in office was horrid and getting worse by the day.

I can recall all the mockery that I and others endured when we called into question the ginned up Iraq War. It was like this on every issue with W, until about 2006, which is when the right-wingers on here mostly went silent. But the media still are carrying the water for their beloved W.

You are implacable, but I respect it. Obama is never going to please you, he is always going to be doing something wrong in your eyes. But don't gainsay those who still have a few stars in theirs.

As for Palin, she'll be back, so people better keep talking about her crazy *ss!

You object to all the positions you listed and he's "still doing a great job"? That's quite a grading curve.

Well, your guy dropped the Presidential curve down a crapload of notches, Billy Boy. You guy finally admitted that he made a mistake a month before leaving.

Our guy admitted to a mistake his first month in office.... what a f**king concept!!! Stating truths and telling people things they may not want to hear!!!

This topic is something that has been known, and although it us unfortunate, if your guy hadn't gotten us into Iraq in the first place, the work in Afghanistan would be 4-5 years further along. YOUR GUY had years, our guy has had 4 weeks.

That's quite a grading scale you have, Billy Boy.

Yes. He's tackling the major problems this country faces head on, and doing so quite capably. He has appointed outstanding people to Cabinet positions, and they appear to be doing their jobs well. On the foreign policy front, he is starting off well. In terms of his relations with the Democrats in Congress, he is doing pretty well, and got the stimulus bill passed, and will soon have a housing bill to sign. Most of his executive orders, along with his Cabinet's administrative changes from Bush administrative policy, have been very good.

You are implacable and hate him. Just admit it. It's your right. He can't do anything to please you. That's fine. He's doing a very good job overall.

I am not and never was a Bush supporter, you bloody cretin. If Al Qaeda had hit the White House while he was in it, i would've [redacted].

I do not hate Obama. He's just another imperial, war-mongering US president, like all of them.

Hey, hey, hey, there Bill W. Kick is sure no "bloody cretin" just because he has an opinion different than yours. I do not appreciate the name-calling. I have noticed with just about every one of your posts, that you have been uber-critical of Obama. You also seem to enjoy a sort of passive-aggressive bickering when cornered on your bias. Knock it off. It is not only silly, it is un-American. If you dislike Obama that much, then move. I am sure Canada or Mexico would take you. The four to eight years will fly by if you are not consumed by your own bitter juices.

That wasn't the reason -- for about the third time in the last year on this board, someone assumed I was a Bushite on zero evidence ... except that I'm no Obama fan, and thus obviously I must be a dirty right-winger. Typical kneejerk "liberal" move -- as is your "love it or leave it" Archie Bunker act, millerbeach.

Bill W, you have just become the 3rd person I get to ignore on this board.

Ummm- your posts in the past have primarily been liberal bashing. Yet strangely devoid of just as strong of criticism of the Bush administration. What is one to assume?

Anyways- you create to much damn drama and negativity. To keep it simply, your posts lack insight and are frankly boring and rehash of no original thought.

Congratu-f**king-lations!

You're braindead.

I'm a leftist; look it up someday.

This is hilairious. Bill W doesn't have his tongue buried up Obama's ass the way you and others on here do, so he MUST be a Bush supporter. God forbid you read anything on here that isn't an amen chorus - if you did you'd find that BIll W hates everyone and everything, and has for many years, and was scathing about Bush for many years. Your kind of idiotic black and white, you're with us or against us, type thinking is what the previous Administration was rightfully reviled for. Congratulations - you've become what you despised, and it only took five weeks.





<RIIIIING!> <RIIIIIING!> Hello, pot.....it's kettle.......you're black.

I can't believe I am saying this, but thanks, Munson Man.

And for the record, I love my mother, Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), David Wright and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Weren't so many of us pissed when, during the last administration, Bush supporters/apologists would tell us that if we didn't like what was going on or if we didn't like/support bush that WE should move to Canada or Mexico? What a ridiculous notion!

I don't put my tongue up anyone's ass unless its love.

I am an Obama supporter, but I don't give him freebies. I don't know how I feel about the financial stimulus packages, especially because I know it won't help those who stayed within their means. The people deserve this money moreso than any banks... and because of that frustration, I couldn't even listen to his speech last night. I am disgusted by all politics.

Secondly- I am not idiotic... I am sensitive to that. I did not get to where I am at in my life without being able to assess a situation for what it is.

I may be wrong about Bill W support of Bush, but definitely not about his negativity. I find it disappointing that I am completely the target of your comments.... when unfortunately the initial Bad Billy Boy, the ultimate curmudgeon is able to amble away freely devoid of commentary....

Because we all know he's a mean-spirited misanthrope and most everybody just ignores him or goes elsewhere (as most of the baseball fans have done).

Then why are you still here, Munson Man?

Because I just ignore him, as most people do.

BTW, I was here long before you, and I'll be here long after you. Deal with it.

Munson Man knows what "most people do." Don't doubt it.

George Will has it right: Time to leave.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/will_090109.html

And now we seem headed for some sort of additional sanctioning of Iran. Which means they become more aggressive against Israel. Which means...

Hellooo! Do we need this?

Has our economy become yesterday's news?

Or is Iran just a useful distraction to avoid all that messy business about regulating worldwide greed?